EDF 2024: 10 Luxembourg entities chosen

As Europe navigates an increasingly complex and rapidly evolving security landscape, the European Defence Fund (EDF) continues to play a crucial role in fostering innovation and cooperation in the development of defence technologies and capabilities.

The European Commission has announced the selection of 60 projects under the 2024 European Defence Fund (EDF) call, with a total of €885 million in funding awarded. Nearly 60% of this amount will support collaborative capability development projects, while the remainder will fund defence research aimed at tackling emerging and future threats.

With this new round of funding, total EU investment in collaborative defence research and development has now exceeded €4 billion since 2021. On average, each selected project involves 15 entities from seven different countries.

For Luxembourg, 21 project proposals (research and development combined) included at least one of the 15 national entities that submitted applications. In the end, 10 Luxembourg entities were selected as part of seven successful project proposals — making Luxembourg the 6th most successful country in terms of success rate under the 2024 EDF call.

The 10 Luxembourg entities selected in this call are:

• University of Luxembourg in the CITADEL RANGE project (Selection of advanced capabilities that enable cyber forces to conduct training, exercising, and mission rehearsal).
• NetCompany-Intrasoft and University of Luxembourg in the ORQESTRA project (Integration integrate post-quantum cryptography capacity both on the field or in legacy military installations)
• Datathings in the SENTINEL project (Shifting military energy provision from a high reliance on fossil fuels toward sustainable, resilient, and efficient energy solutions)
• Integrasys in the NINJA2 project (addressing the challenges faced in global navigation satellite system contested environments, where traditional precision-guided munitions fail due to jamming and spoofing)
• LMO et Odysseus Space in the LUCID project (Studying the military specificities of cislunar space-based threat detection through ground radio frequency and passive optical detection means as well as a cislunar patroller spacecraft)
• Luxgovsat and Amphiciny Technologies in the EPW PHASE 2 project (providing secure and resilient satellite communications for EU Member States)
• LIST in the MARTINA project (providing a framework to assess and validate the effectiveness, robustness and reliability of AI based satellite imagery analysis for different defence use cases with a focus on combining multiple image data types with different characteristics).

"The growing participation of Luxembourg players in the European Defence Fund is the assurance of the development of cutting-edge technologies in Luxembourg for the defence sector," says Rebecca Damotte, Defence Technology and Innovation Advisor at Luxinnovation.

Luxinnovation, national contact point

On 29 January, the European Commission published the work programme for 2025 and calls for the European Defence Fund.

Since 2020, Luxinnovation has been operating under a mandate issued by the Luxembourg Directorate of Defence, with a view to creating a security and defence industry community in Luxembourg's priority sectors, but also to integrate Luxembourg industry and research into the European defence value chain and facilitate their access to EU and NATO innovation and procurement programmes. 

"As a national contact point, Luxinnovation supports companies, enabling them to understand exactly what the European Commission expects of them, but also to exchange with other potential partner companies in consortia projects," says Mrs Damotte.